Life, Sex, and Ideas: The Good Life Without GodOxford University Press, 2003 - 236 páginas "A distinctive voice somewhere between Mark Twain and Michel Montaigne" is how Psychology Today described A.C. Grayling. In Life, Sex, and Ideas: The Good Life Without God, readers have the pleasure of hearing this distinctive voice address some of the most serious topics in philosophy--and in our daily lives--including reflections on guns, anger, conflict, war; monsters, madness, decay; liberty, justice, utopia; suicide, loss, and remembrance. A civilized society, says Grayling, is one which never ceases having a discussion with itself about what human life should best be. In this book, Grayling adds to this discussion a series of short informal essays about ethics, ideas, and culture. A recurring theme is religion, of which he writes "there is no greater social evil." He argues, for instance, that liberal education is better than religion for inculcating moral values. "Education in literature, history, and appreciation of the arts," he says, "opens the possibility for us to live more reflectively and knowledgeably, especially about the nature and variety of human experience. That in turn increases our capacity for understanding others better, so that we can treat them with respect and sympathy, however different their outlook on life." Thought provoking rather than definitive, these essays don't tell readers what to think, but only note what has been thought about how it is best to live. A person who does not think about life, the author reminds us, is like a stranger mapless in a foreign land. These brief and suggestive essays offer us the outlines of a map, with avenues of thought that are a pleasure to wander down. |
Contenido
Public Culture | 67 |
Community and Society | 89 |
Anger and War | 119 |
Grief and Remembrance | 161 |
Nature and Naturalness | 175 |
Reading and Thinking | 199 |
Otras ediciones - Ver todas
Términos y frases comunes
ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD ancient argument beautiful become belief Birkhead Bloom capital punishment century Charmides civilised claim classical antiquity conflict contemporary culture danger death debate Dr Johnson E. M. Forster emotions English especially essays ethical Europe euthanasia everything evil example existence experience fact female guns happens Hazlitt Hofmann hope human ideas imagination insight intellectual intentionally left blank Jane Austen justice kill kind least less liberal liberty literary literature live madness male matter Matthew Arnold means Michael Hofmann mind moral murder nationalism nature Nazism offer one’s oral sex parents past person philosophy Plato pleasure political prompted psychological question reality reason religion religious Remembrance Day reviewing rich sense sexual society Socrates sometimes suffering symbols tarot teaching terrorism thereby things thought tradition unnatural utopias victims victory William Hazlitt writing